Archinect - Features

Screen/Print #54: Galen Cranz on Why We Need to Rethink the Chair

2017-04-28T12:04:00-04:00

Besides buildings (obviously), chairs are probably architects favorite things to design. There’s Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair and Gerrit Reitveld’s Zig-Zag chair; Arne Jacobson’s Model 3107 and Frank Llloyd Wright’s Peacock chair. Today, the tradition continues, with architects from David Adjaye to Rem Koolhaas to Zaha Hadid all designing places to perch. Yet, for all their formal grace and beauty, these chairs rarely break the mold. Invariably, they are designed around an upright individual sitting at a right angle. And, according to Galen Cranz, a Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, such traditional chair designs just don’t cut it—and they're even harming our health.

A sheet of plastic, a few screws, and five minutes are all it takes to assemble one of these "darling" stackable chairs

2016-03-01T15:34:00-05:00

IKEA may be the main peddler of assemble-it-yourself furniture, but, as many disgruntled college students would attest, their designs are often less-than-easy to realize. The "Thermoplastic Darling Stackable Chair", on the other hand, requires just one sheet of pre-scored polypropylene, a few screws, and about five minutes to put together.

Leftover inspiration: the construction aesthetic of "Chair 6.0"

2016-02-28T11:56:00-05:00

What happens when you bend a six-meter long piece of rebar 14 times? Well, this chair, for starters. By using found materials at a construction site and carefully planning ahead, University of Michigan alum and architect Moon Joo Lee was able to create this chair without any welding or use of bolts.

Getting the chair: how cinematic villains' seats illuminate character

2016-02-14T00:07:00-05:00

Imagine Hannibal Lecter in a lawn chair: not quite as menacing, right? While furniture in film can be a subtle part of the mise-en-scene, for cinematic villains, their signature chair often defines their character, even if that character is rotten right down to the studs. What chairs do the best job of bringing out the worst of an empire-crazed nihilist, or a serial killer, or a limelit psychopath? To answer that question, we had these ten evildoers take a seat according to their preferred vice.